august: cleveland county

Happy Neuer! pic.twitter.com/FKyUU4tEeY

— FC Bayern München (@FCBayern) December 31, 2015

The players are slowly but surely falling into place for the 2017 elections. Angela Merkel was already reelected head of her party; now the Greens have followed. The Greens voted Katrin Goering-Eckhardt as their top candidate for the chancellorship with Cem Oezdemir as the second. (Check out this Wikipedia page for an abbreviated explanation of the Realo/Fundi split in the Greens.) Martin Schulz, fresh off a stint as EU President, has been selected as the SPD candidate.

The NSU trial, which has been going on since May 2013, may finally be drawing to a close as Beate Zschaepe is running out of options. This trial started after five members of the National Socialist Underground, a right-wing terrorist organization, were accused of ten murders in Germany.

I'm very sad to see the United States's Ambassador to Germany, John Emerson, leave. I always felt safe in Germany, partly because I knew there was a great diplomatic team keeping things going! Here's an interview with Ambassador Emerson and his family that was on the morning magazine, MoMa.

The fancy new Berlin-Brandenburg Airport is a catastrophe that just won't seem to end. It was announced this month that the airport, originally scheduled to open in 2012, won't be opening this year. This means that the city's two tiny airports must continue to operate until 2018 at the earliest. The Berliner Zeitung ran an editorial called "Who Even Wants the BER Anymore?," which pointed out that the project has known about its problems for years and is a political liability.

The Women's March also took place in Germany on January 21. In Frankfurt, a mixture of Americans and Germans marched for women's rights - this article is in English!

This article about motherhood and feminism in East Germany was very interesting. It talks about the mythical "Ost-Frau" who could quickly return to full-time work after having a child and fully take care of the house as well. Effects of this can still be seen today - 1 in 2 children born in eastern Germany go to a daycare as opposed to only 1 in 3 children in western Germany.

One of my favorite historians, Timothy Garton Ash, won the Aachener Karlspreis for his work against populism and for democracy!

I read Hollywood and Hitler this month - it was so interesting to see how Hollywood reacted to Nazism and inspired me to watch some clips from movies in the '30s. "Inside Nazi Germany" from the March of Time was especially interesting as it was made with Nazi permission, but included some clips stolen when minders weren't paying attention.

In lighter news, I have a podcast recommendation: Ferngespraech, where two best friends talk about living in separate countries.

I just finished reading Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach. Tina Fey suggested that everyone read Riefenstahl's autobiography, but my library system doesn't have a copy of it so I settled for another biography. The TL;DR of Riefenstahl's life is that she made Triumph of the Will among other films for the NSDAP and spent the rest of her life (she died at 101) denying that she knew what the party was up to.

Why you should read it now: Riefenstahl put herself and her career before literally everything. She did whatever it took to get what she wanted, then pretended to be blind to the consequences of her actions. We need to remember that many actions cannot be justified, and history will judge us if we fail to intervene.

This is Paradise: My North Korean Childhood by Hyok Kang does what it says on the tin. The author recounts his experiences growing up in North Korea before and during the famine in the '90s, which ultimately resulted in his family's escape to South Korea via China. I found the account of North Korean schools especially fascinating and horrifying.

Why you should read it now: The world cannot forget North Korea. People are suffering under a horrible dictatorship which stifles every freedom imaginable. The United States cannot only put itself first while we have the power to influence the rest of the world for good.

The File and The Magic Lantern by Timothy Garton Ash are two of my all-time favorite books. The File is about how the East German security system functioned, while The Magic Lantern depicts the final days of dictatorships in Eastern Europe and shows how the protests were successful.

Why you should read it now: Some people think protesting can't do any good. They forget that peaceful protests in Leipzig and across Eastern Europe in the 1980s helped end a dictatorship. Never let anyone tell you that protests are inconsequential - those people have forgotten their history.
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Still to be read: Prague Winter by Madeleine Albright, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, When the Earth Was Young by David Yeadon, and Without You, There is No Us  by Suki Kim.

Shouts out to my local library, which has handled my many books on hold without annoyance. I kinda want to use the hashtag #ResistanceReading for this project, but I'm on the fence. What other books should I read as part of my 2017 education?

2016 is finally coming to an end. I know that I'm not sad to see it go, even though I had some amazing experiences this year. Austria has a good month, but Germany ended the year on a terror-filled note that brought further (in my opinion, unmerited) criticism to the country's asylum system.

Alexander Van der Bellen won the second presidential election in Austria! There were fears that he would lose since the first election was very close and the American election had just occurred. However, many are pointing out that the Austrian presidency is largely ceremonial, and Austria shouldn't overlook the influence of the far-right Freedom Party in the coming year.

In German politics, Angela Merkel was re-elected head of the Christian Democratic Union during that party's meeting in early December. The SPD, however, won't decide who their leader will be in the upcoming elections until January 2017.

Berlin ushered in a red-red-green government comprised of the Left Party, the SPD, and the Greens. Since I wrote my thesis over the possibility of this coalition on the national level, I'm thrilled to see that Berlin has joined Thuringia in this coalition style! Unlike in Thuringia, however, the SPD is the senior partner in this coalition.

"Postfaktisch" was declared the Word of the Year by the Society for German Language in Wiesbaden. Related to that, Buzzfeed released an article talking about how many of the pro-Trump Twitter accounts appeared to be refocusing themselves against Merkel in light of the Berlin attack and the country's upcoming election.

I really truly love the city of Leipzig. If I had to choose between visiting Leipzig or Dresden, Leipzig wins in an instant based on the train station alone. However, I have such mixed feelings about RB Leipzig and their rise to the top of the Bundesliga. This article from The Washington Post manages to voice many of my concerns. Given that my current favorite team is FC Bayern Muenchen, I really don't have room to hate a team for being popular or corporate-owned. It's hard to hate the first Bundesliga team in years from the East Side of Germany. (Hertha Berlin was in West Berlin during the Cold War.) I'm going to try to keep an open mind until I can watch them some more - I didn't get to watch any matches while I was working on the campaign, so I'm out of the loop right now.

Locomore, a crowd-funded train company, just started making long-distance trips. Before they started, German Rail had no competition for long-distance domestic trips, so it will be interesting to see how this progresses! They've naturally been getting a lot of press - arte visited them on their first trip, where they started off late but ended up early in Berlin. Right now, the tickets are cheaper than a German Rail ticket purchased with a 50% discount card; hopefully this keeps up until I can visit and try it for myself!

Now I'll take it over to the less academic, more entertaining part of the Internet.

Michael Buchinger made a video talking about everyday sexism that I enjoyed.

I've really been loving Lucie Kallies's blog as well as Tea and Twigs. It's an easy way to keep up with written German that doesn't feel like homework.


I tend to mention my favorite YouTube channel in every post, but Lena's last video from the US really nails how it feels to leave a country that you've come to love, but still be excited to see friends and family at home.

And since it's almost Silvester....here's Dinner for One.



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Photo via Unsplash

Erfurter Weihnachtsmarkt wird mit Botonsperren geschützt. #breitschreidplatz pic.twitter.com/58Uo4Rc0qT

— ZDF Thüringen (@ZDFerfurt) December 20, 2016

As always, I admire how German police and media have responded to this crisis. They are careful to avoid speculation and revealing the identity of suspects. They released a suspect when there was insufficient evidence to hold him. More media and police should follow their example of not airing every conspiracy theory to the general public; it helps ensure dignity for victims as well as innocent bystanders. It's honorable to stick to the law even when a terrible act has occurred to ensure that proper justice can be carried out.

I remember first hearing about the “East Coast Liberal Media Elite” when I was 17 and Sarah Palin was running for Vice President. This was part of her wider point that “real America” was not represented by the media and people in the central and southern parts of the country were not being given a fair shake. I’ve been thinking more about this after reading this article on vox. 

I fall within so many categories of “coastal liberal elite.” I have a BA in German and a MA in International Studies. I’ve lived in Germany while participating in a government-funded program. I’ve well-travelled within U.S. and Europe. In addition to voting for Hillary Clinton in both the primary and general election, I worked on her campaign in Philadelphia. I’m twenty-five and unmarried. I don’t have children. I love public media, and I just drank a smoothie than contained chia seeds. I’m so privileged by both my whiteness and my place in the middle class.

However, most of these qualities are a product of my life in “real America.” I grew up in rural Oklahoma, attended public high school, then went to the Universities of Arkansas and Oklahoma for my degrees. I learned German in Arkansas, and my experiences there were why I was able to live in Europe for a brief time. After I got my BA, I felt that I still hadn’t learned enough, so I went to graduate school in Oklahoma. You can be liberal and experience the world anywhere, especially with the internet. Your location doesn’t determine your life.

I’ve always been a bit different from my high school classmates, and these differences have increased with age. I am in the minority because I have neither a spouse nor children. I can’t see myself living in Oklahoma forever, mostly because job opportunities that I find interesting are generally not located here. I don’t enjoy stereotypical Oklahoman activities such as hunting or going to high school basketball games, but that doesn’t make me less Oklahoman. I’m still as much a product of this state as my classmates who never left my hometown.

Like the vox article says, it’s not a matter of geography; it’s a matter of economics. Growing up, both my parents worked salaried jobs. I was in the minority in my school, since many of my classmates were growing up in single-parent families and didn’t have the privileges that I did. Some people from my parents’ church and extended family have never actually said that I need to grow up and get a normal job with the requisite husband and kids, but they always respond to my stories with a polite awkwardness that shows that my way of life makes them uncomfortable.

One thing that people seem to forget is that “real America” has the same internet that the coastal part of the country has. (There are some exceptions to this; President Obama’s major visit to Oklahoma was to visit areas of the Choctaw Nation where people don’t have internet access.) This country has so many things in common; people are people. No part of this country is more real than any other because any type of person can emerge from any part of this country.

Hello everyone! I have pulled myself out of the campaign fog long enough to put together some links from German internet this month. They're mostly about food - this post is klein, aber fein!

The Day of the Kiosk happened earlier this month.
Which goods are "typical German?"

Dynamo Dresden beat RB Leipzig! I'm not a huge fan of RB Leipzig, even though I like Leipzig as a city much better than Dresden.
The DFB Cup is always interesting - last year Jena knocked off Hamburg in the first round. This year, Lotte beat Werder Bremen!

Finally, enjoy these pretty photos from the train stations of the year!

My thesis has finally been approved to the Oklahoma online database! You can read it here: https://shareok.org/handle/11244/44225.

It's about the left wing parties and how they can overcome ten years of power by the center-right CDU. I'm most fond of the parts about Thuringia.

Hi everyone!

I haven't had much time to keep up with German politics/culture this month since I started a new job in Pennsylvania. Truth be told, I don't really see myself being able to keep up with Germany for the next few months with the amount of work I'll be doing. So instead, have a few impressions about my life in Pennsylvania.

Wawa is the actual best in that you can make your own iced coffee there.
Mt. Airy is super fancy.
SEPTA is not the worst, and is definitely better than driving into Center City Philadelphia.
Reading Terminal Market is the stuff dreams are made of. I had the best pretzel of my life there + bought some super cheap produce.
Driving is...interesting. People like to take risks and punctuate their risky driving with the melody of a thousand car horns.
Old & historic churches probably don't have air conditioning.
The roads are bad here too.
Full service gas stations still exist (?!)
Philadelphia is much closer to New Jersey than I realized.
The Pennsylvania turnpike costs around $40 if you take it all the way across the state.
Related - you will spend all your money on parking if you drive to Center City.
These people are obsessed with Dunkin Donuts.
The houses are fairytale pretty and the weather is (relatively) mild.
It feels a weird halfway point between Germany and Oklahoma here, culturally, meteorologically, and politically.
Life here is lovely.

It has been a month for international politics. It started with ridiculous fans at Euro 2016 and ended with the Brexit referendum. However, I'm still going to soldier on with my list of links that I bookmarked throughout this month.

The Bundestag voted to recognize the Armenian genocide earlier this month, which certainly didn't help German-Turkish relations, but was celebrated by Armenians in Germany and abroad as a major step for their people. This article (in English) discusses how the resolution was almost unanimous and possible difficulties with Turkey in the future.

Before the Euro 2016 tournament began, an AfD politician remarked that people wouldn't want Boateng as their neighbor. This is part of a larger trend in European soccer where even the national team isn't national enough for the far right.

Related to that is the radio stream I've been using to listen to the German games in Euro 2016. I don't have cable, so WDR has been a lifesaver!

I've been enjoying reading articles from Thueringen24, which has excellent local coverage of Thuringia. I believe they just launched last month; it's really nice to read reports from my German home! This article about a project by exchange students at the technical college was really interesting.

For anyone wondering at home, I finally finished my thesis. Of course, the Rot-Rot-Gruen campaign didn't start on Twitter until I was almost done with my edits - they would have been such a good resource for me! Additionally, Bodo Ramelow, governor of Thuringia, discussed Rot-Rot-Gruen in Berlin earlier this month. This discussion was set off by the news that German President Gauck won't see reelection; some believe that a Rot-Rot-Gruen government will be important for deciding the next president.

This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class is all about the women of Bauhaus. I love Bauhaus architecture and art, so this podcast was right up my alley!

I'm always excited to see a good photoset from East Germany.

I'm still shocked that Brexit is actually going to happen. Here's the twitter round-up of the EU meetings the Tuesday after the vote.

Finally, it's been 40 years since the first woman was allowed to anchor the nightly news in Germany. She came back to talk about her historic role and to celebrate this anniversary. However, the first woman to do play-by-play commentary for the European soccer tournament was met with threats and complaints earlier this month, which shows that there's still work to do for equality in television.

Democrats in the US House of Representatives staged a day-long sit-in on the House floor in order to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with Congressional inaction on gun violence following the shooting in Orlando. During the sit-in, Congress was in recess, so the usual cameras were shut off in accordance with House rules. As a result, members streamed their experiences on Periscope and Facebook, which had the end effect of making the entire thing much more accessible to millennials than it would have been if it had only been on CSPAN.



The European Parliament has a history of sometimes dramatic behavior, like earlier this year when a Greek MEP was thrown out of the European Parliament for racist remarks, but this week was much more exciting.

First UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage was booed as he made a victory lap of sorts in the European Parliament and proceeded to tell his coworkers that they knew nothing of work or job creation.

Legislatures have been fun to watch this week, but I hope that things calm down soon so that these men and women can get back to their less exciting but very important jobs.

If you can find Alexanderplatz, you can find a drugstore because that area has two.

Pinterest always tries to recommend posts to me about packing tips for a trip to Europe. However, most of these posts seem to be under the impression that Europe is a third world continent without drugstores. Germany, for example, has two successful drugstore chains called DM and Rossmann. Both carry very similar (if not the precise same) products as American drugstores, and the prices are usually quite reasonable.

This month, the biggest issues in German politics were the German-Turkish relationship and press freedom in Germany. The German comedy program extra3 made a satirical video about Turkish President Erdogan. This led to the German ambassador to Turkey being called in for a lecture, and prompted German comedian Jan Boehmermann to recite a poem about the leader that was quite nasty. The biggest part of the issue is that there is a section of German law that prohibits insulting foreign leaders. There's been a ton of coverage in both German and English, so have fun!

The Atlantic
Newsweek
bento - What young Turkish-Germans think about Erdogan (German)
Poll: The majority of Germans think Merkel is wrong about Erdogan (German)
German reporter forced to leave Turkey (Older, but still interesting)
Commentary: Give Back Your Medal of Freedom, Merkel! (German)

The rest of my links for this month don't follow a theme - they're just things that I found interesting:

bento reported on how the German emo kids of the 2000s turned out.
Berlin has truly out-Berlined itself: a vegan restaurant opening was shut down by the police.
Angela Merkel gave a speech on the 500th anniversary of the Reinheitsgebot (German Beer Purity Law)
The 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster is especially pertinent in eastern Germany, where the government gave children contaminated milk.
This article about how German coalitions are often named after rather obscure national flags was interesting, since I find the practice both amusing and confusing.
Erfurt got free WiFi in all its trams! This almost makes up for them taking the cozy East German-era trams out of service.
In adorable news, the governor of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, is now godfather to one girl from a set of quadruplets born to a refugee family in Jena late last year.

Finally, I can't decide if I like this band or not: